Sermon for the Feast of All Saints – 30th October 2022

Rev. Canon  L W Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

I have a confession to make. I am absolutely hopeless in understanding how to use new technology. I feel like a dinosaur, which is prehistoric.

I draw my inspiration from Scripture, but even there I discover that Moses was ahead of his time, for he went up into the cloud, and long before I had an iPad, Moses had a tablet, more than one in fact.

Today we celebrate All Saints, on this All Saints Sunday. In the letter to the Hebrews we hear a lovely phrase –a great cloud of witnesses – like an ‘i-cloud’. Have you heard of it? Some of you think I am talking about technology again where the i-cloud is where every message everyone sends to anyone anywhere is stored for ever and a day as evidence, a witness, to what you have ever said in any message to any person, anywhere. The amazing thing is that this contemporary i-cloud doesn’t exist anywhere. You cannot see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or hear it. It has no existential reality – it is simply there. The cloud of witnesses is simply there.

But you will have guessed that the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is not quite like the iCloud, but it has some similarities. The ‘cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews is a glorious vision by a follower of Christ who described something very beautiful. It is a place but no GPS would ever find it for you. This place is full of the evidence of Christian lives lived well, witnesses to a different kind of communication, the communication of love between God and humanity, humanity and God, and between human beings.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for the feast of All Saints – 30th October 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the Harvest Festival at Kokotos Winery – 9th October 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan

When the table is prepared, and the bread and wine are set there, and we are ready, we are well accustomed to hearing these words,

“Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation: through your goodness we have this bread to offer; which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation; through your goodness we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become for us the cup of salvation.”

We are in the wonderful setting of the vineyard of George and Anne Kokotos. What could be a finer setting for our Harvest Festival Liturgy, and we are here in partnership with friends from the Swedish Lutheran congregation.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for the Harvest Festival – 9th October 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – Kokotos Winery

Audio Sermon preached on Trinity 15 (Sept 25th 2022)

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon preached on Trinity 15 (Sept 25th 2022): Amos 6, 1, 4-7; 1Tim 6, 6-19; Luke 16, 19-end

Fr Leonard Dool;an – St Paul’s Athens

The prophet Amos sets out his theme: Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall.

The writer of the Letter to Timothy provides us with words that are part of the Introduction to the Funeral Service: we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.

I think already we are beginning to build up a picture of what scripture is going to say to us today – if we have ears to hear.

In many ways both readings prepare us for the parable of Christ Jesus.

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores”. The scriptures are guiding us morally towards asking big questions about how we can reconcile lives that are rich and lives that are poor; How wealth contrasts with poverty; and the ethics of how wealth is distributed with some justice and equity.

READ MORE

Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Trinity – 18 September 2022: AMOS: 8:4-7,! TIMOTHY 2:1-7, LUKE 16:1-13

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

I speak in the name of the Triune God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit AMEN

As we continue reading the Gospel of Luke and have wended our way with Jesus and the disciples to Jerusalem, in step with the journey and ministry of Jesus, the parables become even more testing and trying, to my mind, but we can’t just skip over the difficult bits of scripture.

All our readings today are challenging, lifted only by the words of the Psalm, but then we are in challenging times and we are also in the season of Creationtide which runs from 1^st September through to the feast of St Francis on 4^th October. As Fr Leonard explained in a previous sermon, this year we are invited to listen out for the Voice of Creation, groaning. The theme text and illustration chosen by an ecumenical group this year is Moses and the Burning Bush from Exodus chapter 3 . Interesting to note how Moses is already on Holy Ground and the fire burns but does not destroy.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity – 11th September 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity – 11th September 2022:Exodus 32, 1-17; 1 Timothy 1, 12-17; Luke 15, 1-10

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

John Newton was born in London, in 1725. His father was a shipping merchant. At the age of eleven, he joined his father on a ship as an apprentice; his seagoing career would be marked by headstrong disobedience.

As a sailor, he denounced his faith after being influenced by a fellow shipmate. His disobedience caused him to be press-ganged into the Royal Navy. He deserted the navy to follow the woman he had fallen in love with. After enduring humiliation for desertion from the navy he was traded as crew to a slave ship, and he began a career in cruel slave trading. While aboard the ship Greyhound, Newton gained notoriety as being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met.

In March 1748, while the Greyhound was in the North Atlantic, a violent storm came upon the ship that was so rough it swept overboard a crew member who was standing where Newton had been only moments before. In the midst of the terrifying ordeal he cried our ‘Lord have mercy’ thus beginning the questioning of himself that led him into faith.

Working as a customs officer from 1756 he began to teach himself Latin, Greek and Theology. He and his new wife engaged with their local parish church and with his new found passion for faith his friends suggested that he should be ordained. In 1746 he was ordained by the then Bishop of Lincoln and he became curate of Olney in 1764.

The reason I am telling you so much about John Newton is that he is the author of the hymn that we have just sung – Amazing grace.

This is perhaps one of the most famous of the Olney Hymns composed by John Newton while he was Curate in that village in Buckinghamshire.

It is personal, and profound; penitential and salvific. He speaks of the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ redeeming him from a life of profanity and of gross degradation of human beings – yet despite all this he is found by God’s grace and transformed by it.

So often we think of people ‘finding religion’ or ‘finding God’. More often perhaps we have to turn this around and think of ourselves as being found BY God, by his grace and by his love. Salvation is an act of God through the cross, not a human action, though our co-operation is entirely necessary.

So often I tell of a story from my university days at St. Andrews. There was a very sincere Christian woman who would hand out little leaflets with passages of the bible. One day she accosted the Very Revd. Matthew Black, Master of St. Mary’s College where Divinity was taught. As she jumped out in front of him, she asked the question such earnest Christians often ask – ‘Are you saved?’. The Professor’s response was, ‘Aye madam, in the year 33AD’.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity – 4th September 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens